Seven thousand acres of grass have faded yellowfrom his cough. These limp days, his anger,legend forty years from moon to Stevensville,lives on, just barely, in a Great Falls whore.Cruel times, he cries, cruel winds. His geese roamunattended in the meadow. The gold last leavesof cottonwoods ride Burnt Fork creek away.His geese grow fat without him. Same old insult.Same indifferent rise of mountains south,hunters drunk around the fire ten feet from his fence.

What's killing us is something autumn. Call itwar or fever. You know it when you see it: flare.Vine and fire and the morning deer come halfa century to sip his spring, there, at the far endof his land, wrapped in cellophane by light.What lives is what he left in air, definite,unseen, hanging where he stood the day he roared.A bear prowls closer to his barn each day.Farmers come to watch him die. They bring crude offeringsof wine. Burnt Fork creek is caroling. He dies whitein final anger. The bear taps on his pane.

And we die silent, our last days loaded with the screamof Burnt Fork creek, the last cry of that raging farmer.We have aged ourselves to stone trying to summonmercy for ungrateful daughters. Let's live himin ourselves, stand deranged on the meadow rimand curse the Baltic back, moon, bear and blast.And let him shout from his grave for us.